Forum Discussion
Experiences with SRS/Logitech SmartDock
David Phillips asked me to share out experience with the Logitech SmartDock and SRSv2 in another thread, I thought I would start a new post to collect other people's experience.
We are refurbishing our head office buildings, the first floor of the first building went live 3 weeks ago, so our experience is limited at this point. This floor has about 250 desks, and now a new collection of collaboration booths, high tables, etc. For the meeting rooms we installed :-
3 x 5 person Rooms with 46" screen, SmartDock, Logitech C930E and Senheisser ML20 Speaker
1 x 9 person Room with 65" screen SmartDock and Logitech Group
2 x 14 person room with 75" screen SmartDock, Logitech Group with extension mic, extron amp and ceiling speakers
3 x 55" Surfacehubs in a variety of different settings
We bought the SmartDocks separate to the Surface Pros inside them, didn't find any issue in following the instructions to create the build, and to configure the accounts in Skype Online. We manage them in Intune, but not in OMS (too expensive!). We've configured them with E1, CloudPBX, PSTN Conferencing and a UK Domestic DialPlan. They have wired connections to our direct internet connection, not through the corporate lan, they arent domain joined.
Out staffs response has been great, it's a big step up from the ugly collection of speakerphones and TVs we had before. Sound clarity is great, Video and screen sharing are very good. At the moment I would say about 40% of our meetings are using skype, and perhaps an equal number dialing into a legacy audioconferencing provider, the balance is shifting as people discover how much clearer the audio is in Skype. Having a quality solution in every bookable space makes a huge difference, we no longer need to think much about which site a user is at when booking a meeting, just find a point where people and a room are available and let them figure out where they want to be.
The Logitech Dock seems pretty good, lots of screws but we don't want something that users will take to bits. Solid feeling, very good swivel function. It would perhaps have been easier with a line out option inside the cable section. There lots of cables going in/out of the dock but our installers have done a good job of making it neat and unmovable.
We understand that we've bought into a very new product but its been remarkably stable. We are aware of 3 devices that reached a point where they needed a reboot as they became unresponsive (we schedule a reboot each night), this typically seems to be related to connecting local devices to the hdmi in.
We've had quite a lot of difficulty getting hdmi switch boxes working reliably on the hdmi input, we wanted to provide autoswtching between hdmi and mini-dp inputs. Forcing the switch to set an appropriate Edid seems to be helping, but I'm not convinced we've totally figured it right yet.
Users have raised 2 areas in the software that could be improved. 1. when dialing out to an external conference provider they cant then connect a laptop into the screen locally. 2. They would like to be able to cancel meetings that don't show up from the device, ideally we would like them to timeout like on a meeting room system.
We're now just over 3 weeks away from our second floor going live, 15 SRS and 4 Shubs. I'll update back here with any new expereinces. Looking forward to seeing what happens as the SRSv2 app updates. DM me if you want any recomendations for installers in th UK.
Medium Room
43 Replies
Hello, good article!
Can I use Logitech Smartdock to connect with users who do not have a Skype for business account?
With SFB, I can create a meeting and users can connect to the meeting as guests with the SFB Webb App, without an SFB account. Can I do the same with Smartdock? Or is it limited to SFB-to-SFB communication?thanks
- Yes Xavier, you give it it's own account (and licensing) and invite it to your meetings, then anyone in the meeting can see and hear from the room, whether they are internal or external.
- "2 x 14 person room with 75" screen SmartDock, Logitech Group with extension mic, extron amp and ceiling speakers" How are you getting the audio from SmartDock to your Extron amp?
- From the screen, we select the screens HDMI as the default audio device and take a line level output from the screen. We were concerned how well this would work as it's not strictly how Microsoft would recommend, but it's working entirely fine. The Group series speakerphone and extension mics are still the audio in.
I guess the question about an auditorium is what the experience should deliver, would a remote participant be a viewer or a presenter, make quite a large difference to the camera placement, mics etc. We've got a small auditorium to open in our next phase, but we will use it for Skype broadcasts rather than 2-way meetings.- I'm surprised you don't get echo or reverb from that configuration. We are testing a Vaddio A/V bridge in one of our small conference rooms. Once you add an A/V bridge, it shouldn't matter what microphone and camera equipment you use. You're just connecting your equipment rack to your Skype environment via a bridge. This concept would give you full flexibility. http://www.vaddio.com/product/av-bridge
- This is great information, thank you!
I'm also interested in integrating SRS into larger spaces up to and including auditoriums. Also we only have a small laptop user base so room PCs are almost a requirement. Being able to display both is going to be important. It's easy with Surface Hub's multiple inputs and the Connect app, it will be interesting to see how it works with SRS. Steve...
I was under the impression that the device reboots nightly. What version of SrSv2 are you running?
- 1.0.8.0, the store version, we aren't in any preview programs.
